My knowledge of India mostly comes from my self-loathing Indian buddy, so I feel like there is a sort of racist slant? I would also appreciate some more info on India so I can correct this in myself, and so I can gently remind him of where his own biases might be coming into play.

Perry Anderson's The Indian Ideology is controversial but well sourced, and can point you toward leftist Indians who've written about Indian history instead of, you know, the fucking English. I read it last year and found it extremely informative about the failures of the Congress Party and of Nehru in particular. The anti-Gandhi part is especially important, as it's something that's necessary to emphasize but is minimized in "official" sources. All of the Indian history books I have ( like this one ) minimize Gandhi's betrayal of the Dalits at Poona.

Some leftists / semi-leftists (left of mainstream, that is, I can't vouch for everything) worth reading -

B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

Arundhati Roy

Pankaj Mishra

Shashi Tharoor (especially Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India . He also has a comedic allegorical novel that I'd like to read, The Great Indian Novel, based both on the independence movement and on the Mahabharata )

Vijay Prashad

Prashad, in a mixed review of Anderson's book , lists these, which will have to go on my list, too:

One reason that Andersons book appears a little anaemic is that it lacks an engagement with the entire tradition of the Left, which he says at the start is a major lacuna in his book. Had Anderson engaged with the writings of the Left he would have to concede an important point, that Indian nationalism was far richer than Gandhi's contribution and Gandhi was not as sacrosanct as Anderson makes him out to be. Marxist writings such as R.P. Dutt's India Today (1940), D.D. Kosambi's An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (1956) and Sumit Sarkar's Modern India (1983) defined the intellectual assessment of the national movement, with the Congress official history, P. Sitaramayya's The History of the Indian National Congress (1935) and Nehru's own The Discovery of India (1946) unable to control the narrative. It was the Marxist method that was the foundation of the work of these writers, and it was their keen eye to the social worlds of the working class that allowed them to break from the hegemony of the Congress. Dutt came out of the communist tradition, where there was no hesitancy in offering a full critique of Gandhi (communist leader S.A. Dange's 1921 book is called Gandhi v. Lenin, with the winner obvious).

. . .

Finally, I'm very curious about the politics and career of Subhas Chandra Bose, a.k.a. Netanji. He seems like a fascinating character and an important revolutionary with some serious flaws (forming an army against the British - that's good! Spending time in Nazi Germany - that's bad!) and if anyone, especially any Indian comrades, has insights here I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd like to read His Majesty's Opponent, a biography by Bose's great-nephew, but I haven't acquired a copy yet.